Universals in Ancient Medicine

The present article aims to show that the ancient medical tradition from Aristotle onwards gives an important philosophical contribution to the theory of universals especially regarding the epistemological aspects of it. The first part of the article focuses on Aristotle’s views on the status of medical knowledge, which are set against the background of the debates reflected in the Hippocratic corpus. The author argues that some tensions in Aristotle’s account can be seen as a sort of map for understanding the subsequent medical debates on the universal generalization problem until Galen. Insofar as it is an art, medicine should be seen as relying on a body of universal knowledge; however, individuals and individual exceptions have an important position in medical knowledge that aims to treat individual patients as such (not only as representatives of a universal kind): hence the crucial role assigned to experience. The second part of the chapter discusses the Rationalist, Empiricist and Methodist views on the status of medical knowledge regarding the generalization problem. Finally, two sections are devoted to Galen. On one side, Galen follows the steps of Aristotle’s discussion. Galen’s views on universals, division and specific difference are extensively compared with those of the Peripatetic philosophers of his time (Herminus, Alexander of Aphrodisias). On the other side, however, Galen emphasizes that medicine should be regarded as a fully scientific knowledge even in the treatment of individuals: hence his emphasis on the rational aspects both of conjectural knowledge and of the knowledge of quasi-Leibnizian unrepeatable individual natures.